Promoting Love and Hope – TheRoanoker.com

The following story is a preview from our July/August 2024 issue. For more stories like this, subscribe today. Thank you!

Foster care and adoption change the lives of children, of every single family.

Bryson is 16 years old High school student who loves anime and has recently become interested in drawing. (He is currently perfecting his eyes.)

Like most kids his age, he’s started thinking about what he wants to do after high school and has set his sights on being a landscaper or going to art school. In the summer, he’s a solo entrepreneur, mowing his relatives’ and neighbors’ yards to earn some extra money when he’s not busy being a great big brother to his family.

Although this is all very responsible, in many ways he is a typical teenager with the everyday worries of a teenager. “My group of friends helps each other wherever they can.”

But even at 16, Bryson knows that things could have turned out very differently for him if child services hadn’t intervened six years ago. When he was just 10 and his little sister Bella was five, they were placed in foster care with foster parents who adopted them two years later. At the time, the courts ruled that it was not in their best interests to return to their biological parents.

There are currently 285 children in the care of Roanoke City Social Services; 24 of them are between 18 and 21 years old, the rest are minors. 49 of these children are placed with relatives. The average time a child spends in foster care nationwide is 20.25 months. In Virginia, 1,641 foster children are waiting for an adoptive family.

Just over 10% of children in foster care return to their biological families.

Foster care requires a lot of collaboration. While foster parents are on the front lines, social services, lawyers, family court judges, and nonprofit organizations that support parents and work with the government are working hard to achieve the best for the children.

Although most people are aware of foster care, for those not involved, this field is full of misconceptions and unknowns.

One of the biggest misconceptions concerns the goal of the system. The ideal it works towards is reunification. Although the 10% figure may seem low, the courts are reluctant to take children away from their parents. They give them every opportunity to improve their living situation so that it is more comfortable for the children.

Since 2002, the Supreme Court of Virginia has ruled that every child in foster care has the right to a court-appointed attorney to represent his or her interests. This attorney is called a guardian ad litem.

Diana Perkinson has been a guardian ad litem since 1992, which accounts for 90% of her cases. She worries that the public has a misconception “that social services only take children away,” but “they will literally do anything to make sure that children can return home safely to their families.”

Like most lawyers, Perkinson must know and communicate her client’s position. But unlike most lawyers, she must also be trained in child development, medical and psychological issues and take all of that into account when making her recommendation to the court, even if it is not the same decision as her client’s.

Perkinson loves her job.

Working with young children sometimes requires different communication. She explains that parents need to do some homework before the children can go back.

A seven-year-old once replied that his mother “needs to do it again.” He was right. And Perkinson is often impressed by the children’s insight and deep understanding.

During a casual conversation during a first meeting, when she introduced herself to a boy as his lawyer, he hung his head dramatically. When she asked him what was wrong, he said, “I can’t afford a lawyer!” He was relieved to learn that the state was paying his legal fees.

In addition to the courts and families, Perkinson works closely with social services to understand the needs of each client and report on progress.

The first thing you see when you enter the office of Gwen Coleman, who has been the director of Roanoke City Human and Social Services since June 2023, is a sign that reads, “Welcome back! We’re so glad you’re back, Gwen!”

Coleman is equally happy to be back in Roanoke, where she started as a foster care supervisor in 2005. She rose through the department before moving to Atlanta in 2021 to work as Fulton County’s foster care director.

Coleman grew up in a traditional family with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins ​​and siblings who were always there for each other. But she knows that not every child is so lucky and credits her career choice to her grandmother.

She was an early example of her purpose in life being to help others. The rest of the community called her Cousin Florence (often shortened to Confluence) because she was always looking out for others. In addition to Coleman, all four of her sisters were involved in service work.

Confluence would have recognized the “it takes a village” mentality of the foster care system.

Although DSS is ultimately responsible for all children in foster care and oversees many cases itself, it enlists the help of local nonprofit organizations to support foster parents.

One of these organizations is DePaul Community Resources, a therapeutic foster care agency. While Roanoke City (or the location where the child entered the CPS foster care facility) maintains legal guardianship of the children, DePaul supports dedicated foster parents and their wards.

This means that we are involved in screening and matching foster families with their foster children and setting up a 24-hour hotline for them.

Their staff have smaller caseloads because a coordinator can only care for up to eight children at a time, so they can visit a home several times a month. They also help children leaving foster care learn the life skills they need to be independent.

DePaul sometimes offers additional financial support for things like therapy for the children in its care. But Melissa Cook, DePaul’s regional manager, rejects the all-too-common belief that foster parents do this for financial reasons: “It’s not even a trade-off.”

Want to read more about foster care, including stories from real local foster parents like Sophia Semones and Kriste and Joe Chase? Check out the latest issue, on newsstands now, or check it out for free in our digital guide linked below!

The above story is a preview from our July/August 2024 issue. For more stories like this, subscribe today. Thank you!